Meet graffiti writer NYCHOS
Meet graffiti writer NYCHOS
NYCHOS is a street artist with graffiti deeply rooted in him. He creates graffiti from deep within and shaped by the visual inputs of his early years.
NYCHOS is one of the best to make graffiti and street art murals.
What is your first experience with graffiti?
When I was 8 I found some Road marking cans. The neighbor of my parents back then had this farm, and I kind of tagged the shit out of his whole farm for some reason. I have no idea what I was doing and now when I am thinking about it I got into so much trouble for that for sure. Before this, I was already drawing a lot of cartoons – I was on this kind of comic trip with myself and also went to an art school with graphic design and painting. I remember I just hated not being able to paint well back then. I couldn’t paint. I couldn’t draw. I knew I could, but I didn’t have the skills, so I had to teach myself. When you are 16 or 17 years old, you are still completely restless and you want to have some action, and graffiti is a lot of fun. The spray can is super addictive, as you know. It’s just like you have this can in your hand, and it’s like “holy shit!”. I remember my first pieces I painted, it was just like “what is happening!”. I was hooked from the first moment.
When did you go from just painting for fun to taking it more seriously?
We started getting more serious in 2001, but in real life we had no ideas, what we were doing. On Fridays and Saturday mostly, we went out with a couple of cans in our backpacks ready to go bombing. We stole bikes at the train line, and we painted some train pieces. We got chased by the train line security a bunch of times – stuff like that you know. Mainly also getting a feeling for being out there at night and painting some crappy pieces, and having the train pass by next to your head – literally a meter next to your head, like “duck down!” Just let it happen and be calm and stuff like that. Just the feeling for the night was very im – portant. I was about 17 at that time, and that was, when I changed into NYCHOS, actually.
What advice would you give yourself as a younger graffiti writer?
Don’t be scared of the older generation. My generation and a little bit before and after me, those guys have hit it so hard. When social media came, where you could see everyones work all the time, I can imagine, that it would feel like it’s super hard to get out there for the younger generations – but it’s not true! It’s not true. See it as a motivation, learn from it and make your own thing. As I say: “learn the rules and break them for yourself ”. We all very much want to have a new, solid, diverse, younger generation.
The path is the goal. The journey is the experience, and there is no goal in the end. We can go on to the end of our days with what, we are doing, if we let ourself. What I have wit – nessed, is that graffiti is clearly a community thing in many ways, and we influence each other, and we put borders and beliefs in it, and we say “You have to do this and this, and if you do it like this, you are not real.” You can learn the rules, but you have to destroy the rules to be real.
I am a graffiti writer and I am
an artist and I paint, but I have
learned painting on the street
being a graffiti writer, and that is
something I will never change.
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1 Comment
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